


I don’t believe in fate (but She has a hand in life anyways)

by Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: D-centric, Gen, Origin Story, Theyre all trans ofc, may include original killjoy characters for plot reasons, will be a series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27264844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth/pseuds/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth
Summary: Dr. Death-Defying, before he was Dr. Death-Defying
Relationships: Agent Cherri Cola & Dr. Death Defying (Danger Days)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 11





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Oh for this foc, D doesn’t have his name yet, so ‘he’ refers to Dr. Death-Defying! :)

He’s standing in the bathroom with the electric razor his father uses, and his hair is spilling out of the sink and onto the floor like so many tentacles or cat’s tails or fucking _something_ , and he wants to go back, wishes he hadn’t done this, wishes there was some way to fix this before his parents open the door and see what he’s done. He starts picking up his hair in chunks from the bathroom floor, chipping his nails against the edges of the tiles, and he freezes when he sees himself in the mirror again. He looks more like a boy, and he looks less like himself. The hair slips back out of his grasp as he stares, the mirror-person’s eyes burning through him. He isn’t sure how long he stands there, only that chunks of the ceiling begin to rain down around him and he doesn’t notice until something hits the mirror and it shatters, carving lines across his face and chest before he has the chance to duck. When he does, crawling to hide beneath the sink, he’s dripping little spots of red water onto the bright white tiles. He’s fifteen years old, and he’s never seen blood before. 

And that’s how the Analogs begin, at least for him. They’d been burning down the world outside the Battery for years, but it wasn’t until they dropped a bomb on his house that the boy who would become Doctor Death-Defying took up arms against the company that shaped the world. 

His house falls down around him, and he leaves, ignoring his family, dead in the rubble, because the alternative is too much to bear. He picks a direction, and walks out of the wasteland that was once his house, into the wasteland he’ll learn to call home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: use of blasters, not against anybody. They are sometimes referred to as guns

Those first nights in the desert are hard, but survivable. A few days in, and he meets a woman with a motorcycle who cleans and bandages his wounds, gives him three cans of tuna, and doesn’t ask for his name. The food is enough for him to keep going, until he finds a row of rickety tarps stretched out to make a tent, people in bright colors bustling around and training with rayguns. He stands there, too shy to approach, until a tall, thin person with teal hair comes up to him. 

“Are you lost?” They put a hand on his shoulder, and he tries to stand on his toes without them noticing, tries to look bigger and stronger and braver than he is. 

“I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

They smile, nod. “Here to fuck BLI up? Welcome.” They beckon D over to the tents, speaking all the while. “My name’s Name Pending, they/them pronouns—“ they grab a passing stranger by the arm, point them to D, who’s trailing slowly after. “This here’s Valley of the Shadow of Death, which is a damn long name, feel free to call her literally anything else. She’ll help ya get all situated, find you a gun and, uh, stuff.” And with that, they head off, cheerfully ignoring Valley as she flips them off. 

“Hey, you new here?” He nods, and she smiles at him as she ducks into the tent, holding open the flap for him. “You already know my name, she/they pronouns. You?” 

He freezes, looks up at her at a loss for words, and finally manages, 

“I’m, uh, a boy?”

She smiles. “So he/him?” He nods, unable to hide his own smile. 

Valley shows him where he’ll sleep, dragging out a sleeping bag and square of plastic to keep it dry when the ground is wet, then rummages through a bathtub-sized bucket of guns, finally ending up with a small, white one. 

“Try this?” He takes it, and it fits into his grip perfectly, hands wrapping around the gun like they were meant to fit together. He raises the blaster, and Valley flinches. “Not inside! Here, let me show you.”

Again, he drifts behind her, silent. Three or four people in brightly colored clothes are lined up, shooting at empty food cans on a low stone wall, ignoring Valley as they lead him over, pulling her own bright pink blaster out of a holster strapped to her leg. 

“Like this, see?” Silently, she demonstrates checking the battery, turning off the safety and adjusting the stun settings, and aiming. They fire, and miss, but the blast is so large it takes out three cans nonetheless. “Mine’s modified,” she adds, “for maximum damage. Pretty neat, huh?” He nods, silent, and she motions him up to the line, points to a specific can with an encouraging grin. The gun is fully charged, and turning off the safety and setting it to stun comes as naturally as breathing. He raises the gun, and fires. 

He misses by a long shot, face burning in humiliation as he avoids looking up at Valley. 

“Hey now, good job! Ya did everything right, it just takes some practice to get the laser shit to line up where ya want it to go, hm?” Valley grins, and he doesn’t see it, too focused on his failure. 

“I’m sorry.”

“What? Sorry about what?” D shrugs. 

“Wasted the battery with that.”

“And?” Valley flicks on her gun again, fires a succession of laser blasts up at the sky, hitting nothing. “We can recharge this shit, practice is more important than saving shit up. No point in armfuls of perfect-charge guns and nobody can shoot them, hm?”

D shrugs again. “Okay.” He still hands them the blaster, though, which they don’t accept, pushing her palm against it. 

“Keep trying.”


	3. Chapter 3

He does try again, every night for the next few weeks, as he settles in to life with the rebels. His palms become calloused from holding the blaster, as his skin burns and tans, as the older fighters around him introduce themselves and welcome him. 

About a month in, his hair is long enough again to run his hands through when he’s thinking, and that’s what he’s doing right now, lying on his sleeping bag in the dead of night, thoughts racing. 

He’d been asked to join a fighting squadron on a mission, asked to journey towards Battery City— an area called War Zone One, in order to try and beat back a general and her fighters. There’s a protective leather jacket for him hanging on a coathook, and he’s charged and re-charged his blaster just in case, but he still doesn’t know if he’s going, and sunrise is fast approaching. 

In the end, he decides not to go, watches as a unit of unnamed rebels drive off in a transport truck, Name Pending behind the wheel and Valley guarding their back. The camp is quiet with so many rebels gone, and he finds an empty stool easily enough, dragging it out to a more remote part of camp, his back turned to a few scraggly bushes and desiccated trees. He’s mending his other pair of pants, and doesn’t want the others to see his sloppy darning skills, though the bright red thread he’s found will be visible against the black of his pants. 

He’s fixed the worn-away inseam running up his right leg, and is stabbing away at a mystery tear by the ankle, when he hears shuffling in the bushes behind him. He turns around, slowly, and spots a kid in a pale pink hoodie, doing their best to stay hidden. Confused, he waves at them, and the kid takes off, stumbling over their own feet in the rush to escape. He shrugs, and goes back to trying to unknot his needle from the knot he’d made.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Lots of death

What’s left of the fighting unit comes back in tatters at sundown, soon after, days earlier than expected. 

The truck rolls in on two flats, the right front wheel entirely torn off, rebels staggering out of the back dragging their bleeding, screaming compatriots out along with them. As soon as the first boot hits the ground, the remaining rebels burst into action, calling out names and starting triage with a kind of resigned tension. The boy just stands right there in the center of camp, watching. Too scared to move, he is forced to bear witness to each individual scene playing out in front of him. 

Nobody pays him any mind, too caught up with their lovers, their siblings, all the horrors of the war brought home, in a way he can only imagine has happened so many times before. The clearing is filled with people, but it’s him alone who watches Name Pending push open the door to the truck, the only one who sees them look up, meet his eyes in panic, and fall the next few feet to the sand, dead before they hit the ground from a bullet in the gut. Still, he can’t move, can’t break through the fear freezing him in place. 

He stands there for hours, or seconds, until someone waves a hand in front of his face, guides him back to his sleeping bag, leaving a bloody handprint on his shoulder where they’d touched him. It’s days until he next gets the chance to wash the blood away, and by then, it’s left a deep brown stain. It never fades, no matter how often he scrubs at it with sand. The dead rebels are buried in a single grave beside camp.


	5. Chapter 5

The next time he’s invited on a run, it isn’t a request. 

“We need supplies, and there aren’t enough of us for a run, not without you.” Valley’s face is calm, and her voice doesn’t leave room for argument. He takes the proffered jacket— a solid defense against most lasers, but no match for real guns, like the one that had killed Name Pending. He writes their name on a scrap of paper and slips it into his pocket before he leaves, following Valley as they limp, nursing a blaster wound, to a group of rebels standing around some motorbikes splashed in various colors. 

“Welcome aboard.” It’s Chelsea Cheshire who speaks, with his hands, a rebel he hasn’t met yet translating her signs for the boy. Cheshire is one of the de facto leaders, he’s noticed, a green-haired person even shorter than he is, with both sides of her mouth carved into a permanent grin, a piercing at the end of each. “We’re going to hit a supply train, here—“ there’s a map he hadn’t noticed yet, spread out along the seat of one of the bikes. “—and we’re going to aim for the third-to-last car, see if we can tip the damn thing over.”

Another rebel nods, pressing a different kind of gun into the boy’s hands. It’s three times the size of his normal raygun, and there’s a spool of wire connecting through to what appears to be a large hook, curved into wickedly sharp points. 

“Half of us will take these, aiming for the top of the left side of the train, and _pull_ , driving directly away from the train with the wires taut. The other half will guard everyone’s backs, from both sides.”

Cheshire nods. “Exactly. If you know how to drive a motorbike, you’ll be driving. If you don’t know, you’ll be shooting. That means you,” he addresses the boy, “and we’ll do our damndest to keep you safe, hm?” The ‘joy translating for her speaks gently, a sharp contrast to Cheshire’s demeanor, intense and seemingly a little too eager for the mission. 

The boy ends up riding behind her, clinging to Cheshire’s dusty black jacket, patched with scraps of purple velvet. He’s never been in a car, let alone ridden on a motorbike, and it’s terrifying, the rush and the noise and the thought that in less than a half hour, he’ll be committing his first open act of defiance against the company. 

The others don’t seem to share his fears, some lifting their bikes up onto only the back wheel as they drive, seemingly in an act of exuberance, and he has to look away, burying his face into Cheshire’s back, terrified of watching them crash. Nobody does, to his amazement. 

Soon enough, the tracks come into view, empty and lifeless for now. Some of the bikers split off, using a flat, ramp-shaped rock to boost them up and over to the right side of the train tracks, Valley among them. And their pace slows, until the rumble of a train can be heard, at first distant, but soon enough here, barreling down the tracks so fast it takes him a moment to realize what’s happening. Not Cheshire or the other rebels, though, who burst back up to nearly-maximum speed in unison. The chase is on.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: unnamed character death

He’s just got his wits collected when one of the rebels shouts, firing a flaregun into the air. It must be a signal, because everyone with one of the big hook-guns readies them, one-handed, and aims them at the train. He fumbles after, praying he doesn’t fall off the bike as he shakily points the barrel at the train. Another flare goes off, and they fire, just as BLI soldiers open fire from the windows of the train. 

If anyone says anything, he doesn’t hear it, tucking the hook-gun, still loosing wire, between his stomach and Cheshire’s back, so he can hold on tight to her with both hands. The motorbike accelerates that last bit to full speed, pulling away from the train in unison with all the others, several rebels returning fire at the train. And the boy shuts his eyes again, but not in time to miss seeing a bullet hit some nameless rebel’s head, sending their bike crashing, the passenger hitting the ground just as dead as the driver, wire going slack. He shudders, winces, and tries not to cry. 

He opens his eyes again, shocked, as a great cacophony of groaning, screeching metal splits the air. A glance towards the tracks confirms it— the train is falling. And fall it does, a gradual, terrible pull as it topples to the side, wheels bending and BLI soldiers screaming as they try to stop it. The boy feels sick. It hits the ground in a cloud of dust, and Cheshire quickly lets up, decelerating quickly so the line connecting them to the train doesn’t jerk them back, doesn’t cause them to crash. She stops the bike, and both hands are holding blasters before she’s even touched the ground. He beckons to the boy, and the meaning is clear; _stay close_. 

Already, rebels are slipping into train compartments, dispatching those soldiers still alive and unharmed, and bringing out armfuls, bagfuls of food, water, and medical supplies. The boy joins them, following Cheshire down a hallway, stumbling over sideways rows of seats with his gun still resting in his pocket, unused. Cheshire moves over the seats with practiced ease, and he scrambles after her, struggling to keep up in the unfamiliar territory. Finally, Cheshire stops, breaking open a small metal box and beckoning to him with a smile, eyes glimmering. Nervous, he obeys. 

He’s surprised to find the box is nothing but a locked refrigerating case, holding several small yellow-orange fruits. He watches, silent, as Cheshire draws a long, wickedly sharp blade, and cuts into the flesh of the fruit, offering him a dripping slice. She wipes her knife on her pants, and puts it away, before making a series of motions with her hands and pointing at the fruit— telling him what it’s called. He just watches, biting into the sticky, sweet piece of fruit.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter! I haven’t abandoned this, don’t worry, life is just So Much right now :)

They leave the train, eventually, loaded down with supplies, hopefully enough to use for years. He’ll never know if the supplies last that long. 

One of the fallen rebels had worn a mask, a simple plastic half-mask, and Valley gently pulls it off what’s left of their head, wipes off as much of the gore as they can, and ties it to their belt, to bring back to camp and burn. 

You don’t know their names, so it’s crude sketches of them that join Name Pending in your jacket pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment below, and come find me on tumblr @wishiwasthemoon-tonight!!


End file.
